This guide describes the records of the federal courts, as well as records of Congress and the executive branch, that are relevant to researching federal judicial history. Includes an Introduction to Historical Research in Federal Judicial History. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.

Precedents are decisions judges have issued in prior cases. In the common law, precedents are used to determine what the outcome of present cases should be, under the doctrine of "stare decisis, "which stipulates that new cases are resolved by applying legal rules developed in the process of deciding past cases. This volume postulates a relationship between the concept of legal precedent and the means that are used to make specific precedents available to the legal profession. The author concentrates specifically on the effect computer databases such as lexis and westlaw will have on the use of precedent in the common law. By tracing the history of law reporting, Professor Brenner demonstrat...

Late night comedians and journalists eagerly seized upon the case of an elderly woman who sued McDonald’s when she spilled hot coffee in her lap as a prime example of frivolous litigation. But as Rustad and Koenig argue, cases such as these are an incomplete and misleading characterization of tort law. Corporations have successfully waged a public relations battle to create the impression that most lawsuits are spurious, when in fact the opposite is true: tort law plays a crucial role in protecting consumers from dangerous and sometimes life-threatening hazards. Without legal remedies, corporations would suffer no penalty for choosing profits over public health and safely. In Defense of To...